When I was a lad, my old dad always used to say, "Change your oil regularly, son, and you'll rarely have any engine problems." Good advice indeed at a time when the statistic that 90% of all engine wear takes place in the first few seconds of engine life wasn't even invented. So every 2500 or 3000 miles, I forget which, I would dutifully warm the engine of my ten-year-old Triumph TR4 and drain the oil, allowing at least 30 minutes for as much of it as possible to drip into...
Getting long life from a racing piston that is subjected to 8000 hp is not easy. Every trip down the 1000-foot dragstrip used by NHRA's Full Throttle Drag Racing Series means a modicum of damage to an engine and, with the pistons, damage is a way of life. John Stewart, tuner and crew chief for sophomore Top Fuel racer Shawn Langdon, has a great deal of experience in the sport, which makes him a perfect choice to take care of a newcomer like Langdon. "We use Venolia pistons with a...
I've always said that to be a good engineer takes many years of experience but to be a great one takes an appreciation of history as well. It's a well-documented fact that very little is totally new in the world of automotive technology. For instance, four-valve chambers were first recorded in the Peugeot L3 of 1913, while the very first turbocharger came about in the mid-1920s - just two examples that readily spring to mind and were readily 're-invented' later in the...
RF85 was covered last year in the pages of the May 2009 Race Engine Technology, but in that instance most of the data presented referred to the results of tests on cutting tools such as saw blades and taps. I spoke recently to the owner of Better Than New, in Tennessee, US, the company which carries out the RF85 surface treatment and which claims to reduce dry friction between metal pairs by around 85% (hence the name RF85). RF85 say people send the whole disassembled engine for...
The definition of an engine is apparently "a machine that converts power into motion". This may be true in its widest sense but when it comes to rotary outputs, I like things to be more precise. Far be it from me to contradict the Oxford English Dictionary, but in its basest form surely an engine is "a machine that converts torque into motion"? I know I'm being slightly pedantic, but engines - at least the ones we are more familiar with - are designed to produce...